


Two Things

by Helicidae



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Brain Injury, Gen, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-13 20:15:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helicidae/pseuds/Helicidae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is beaten and tortured until he can remember only two things:</p><p>1. His name is John Watson.<br/>2. He believes in Sherlock Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/17487.html?thread=102185807#t102185807

John doesn’t remember how he got to this place.  He suspects that’s probably the side effect of some drug or other; they seem too clinical to have gone down the concussion from head trauma route.  He remembers the initial humiliation routine though, done half a day after he’d woken in his cell – a strip search that lasted at least half an hour longer than necessary, his assigned number (31), the hose-pipe shower while two men scrubbed him until he was raw – which he supposes is on purpose.  No point in humiliating a prisoner if they’re not going to remember it.

His room is better than he would have thought.  Four square metres, wooden floor, white painted concrete walls and ceiling.  There is a bed, a sink and a toilet; the water coming from the tap is icy to match the dry cold of the air and the bed has a wooden frame with a mattress barely a couple of inches thick.  No windows.  The door is steel and painted black.

John wonders what the point of this is.  He doesn’t have any information anyone could want.  He’s not even worth anything as bait now that Sherlock is dead.

Now that Sherlock is dead.  Barefoot, John sits down on the floor (the bed is forbidden when the light is on; he still has yellow and purple bruises from that lesson).  He pushes a fist to his closed mouth and refuses to let the tightness in his chest surface.  Not in front of the cameras.  Why are things like this still happening when Sherlock is dead? 

After eight days, or at least eight times the light switches off and he’s allowed to sleep, he starts to honestly wonder if they’re just going to keep him here until he rots.  Food is delivered and he has water from the tap.  He is starting to smell, though.  There is only so much a person can do with cold water and the sleeve from his own clothes.

When will they start with the torture, interrogations or whatever the hell they’re planning?  Staring at blank walls is maddening.  He can’t even look like he’s trying to escape before someone and their cudgels come in to stop him.  John almost wishes they’d hurry up with their plans.

He takes that back after the tenth day when they escort him out, strap him naked to a table and electrocute him until he’s barely conscious, bloody saliva pooling onto the table where his head tilts and tongue lolls out.  He swears at them, rolling insults out on shaky bravado, but he is ignored.  It is worse than retribution, somehow.

This repeats itself on the eleventh and twelfth days.  Nothing on the thirteenth except anticipation so thick he’s sick with it.  It starts again on the fourteenth.  On the fifteenth he has a heart attack and as they’re performing ventricular defibrillation he pisses and shits himself and cannot remember a time when he was more scared in his life.

Afterwards, shaking on the floor of his room, he remembers the moment Sherlock lent forwards on the building edge and hates himself for not believing that was the more frightening.

On the sixteenth day when John is wheeled to the electrocution room he’s already panting out half remembered song lyrics and sections of the Krebs cycle, desperate attempts to distract himself.  The machines look like something straight out of a 1950s psychiatric hospital horror and maybe that’s the point.  They’re big and grey and plastic, ugly boxes with more grey switches and dials.

His eyes are pinned on the wire and he can’t stop himself from struggling as he sees it approach, inevitable.

Then it’s wound around his cock – he can’t think if it’s better than the times it was coiled painfully tight up his arsehole – and keep calm, try to relax, it’ll be over soon and it’s just pain –

they touch the prod to his neck – his spine arches and his neck throws back, he’s grinding the back of his head against the table except he can’t feel anything other than pain and it’s burning and he can’t breath and every muscle screams.

The prod is taken away and John’s sweating, gasping and sucking in air through clenched teeth because he can’t shout out, though he’s not quite sure why.  The pauses are almost as bad because it’s the anticipation that gets behind his ribs and pulls and pulls.  His eyes are tight closed and it feels like they could bulge and pop out if he opens them –

another touch and his back contracts like someone’s taken a knife to it, he opens his mouth and can’t stop screaming, his chest is on fire and where spine meets skull is burning, stabbing and pain and pain and he writhes and it won’t stop.

It does stop and the tears are hot on his face.  Don’t anticipate it.  It’s just pain.  1950s psychiatric horror?  Was it 1950s?  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was 1950s he’s sure, it must be.  Or 1960s.  Don’t anticipate it but why is it taking them so long, it’ll start again in seconds it must do except don’t think about it.  Krebs but he can’t remember if it’s citrate or isocitrate that comes first –

screaming, more screaming, pulling at the couple of inches slack in his restraints and it hurts too much now, pain stabbing its way up his spine and around and around in his skull.  His eyes will burst and his throat sandpaper itself down.  He bites his tongue; it’s bleeding heavily and he can’t even taste it.  He gags on the blood.

He’s pushed as far over as the straps allow, his head is held sideways on the table and latex gloved fingers pull out and inspect his tongue.  He tries to bite but can’t muster the strength as they hold his jaws wide open.

The hands leave.  “No,” he says, thick, swallowing down sparks of pain and bloody saliva.  “Please, no.  Please.”  Because he can’t do this again, he can’t.  Every part of him aches, bone deep.  They’ll carry on for hours and he just can’t.  “No.  Please stop.”  He realises distantly that he’s shaking, whole body tremors –

The prod is pressed onto one nipple.  John’s teeth clench, his throat seems to close and he can’t scream no matter how much he tries.


	2. Chapter 2

It’s almost lights out.  It has to be by now.  John blinks, slowly and deliberately.  He’s long past the stage of crossed pupils and eyes sticking closed.  Now they’re stuck open, itching.  The walls undulate gently but that’s just the sleep deprivation.  He knows that.  Clings to it.  Don’t look at the bed.  That’s only temptation.  There are mice crawling along the skirting boards and he’s almost certain that they’re the sleep deprivation too.

It’s better than electrocution.

He licks his lips slowly and grinds the side of his head against the wall.  His legs shake.  Sherlock had told him, a while back, that the temples were the weakest part of the human skull.  He’d known that already but hadn’t said anything.  The junction between different bones.  He should be able to name them but he can’t.  He can’t quite think of anything.  That’s the sleep deprivation.  Hopefully.  If it’s from the electrocution or the time they beat him around the head until he blacked out then it may be permanent.

He doesn’t want it to be permanent.  He’s just waiting for lights out, as if that’s any better.  Sometimes lights out seems better when the lights are on for too long but it’s not.

His legs ache, shake and if he could only sit down, just for a little bit.  Just don’t look at the bed.  Maybe five minutes of sitting down will be enough.  Not the bed.  They might not catch him.  Two minutes seem almost worth it.  It won’t be, though, if they do.

John’s legs disagree.  The mice have gone anyway.  He slides down the wall into an awkward half kneel.  Just two minutes.  He’ll get up after two minutes.  He can’t bring himself to care that it’s pressing on the bruises covering his ankles or that he’s not going to get up on his own.  His eyes are already closed and he’s asleep.  He wakes after what seems like seconds when the hand bruising his upper arm drags him to his feet.

“No,” John manages before he’s backhanded across the face.  His back hits the wall and he’s crushed against it.  A fist to his stomach; he doubles over and is pushed back upright.  Another fist winding him.  He drops when the arm holding him up is suddenly absent and he can’t scramble away fast enough to avoid the boot connecting to his thigh.  He’s hauled to his feet again but his leg has gone numb and he crumples.  Hauled up.  Falls down.  Hauled up.  This time he manages to stay standing.  He’s gasping.  The man reaches towards him and John lashes out; his fist is caught easily and smashed against the hard concrete wall.

He’s left gasping, leaning against the sink like it’s a crutch.  The man locks the door behind him and John retches dryly.  He’s spinning, light-headed.  Adrenaline.  In the beginning he’d tried to memorise each of the people he’d see but he can’t even remember the hair colour of that one.  He groans and it turns into a whine that crawls up his throat, still raw.  He wants the lights to go out.  It won’t be better and he knows he’ll only want them back on when they do switch off, but now it’s bright and blaring.  His eyes itch and he rubs at them.  They hurt.

When is Sherlock coming?  No, not Sherlock.  Sherlock isn’t coming because Sherlock is dead.

That hurts more than his eyes and John shudders in a breath.  Are the mice back?  He can’t quite focus.  Surely it should be lights out by now.  His legs ache, one more than the other, and it takes him a second to remember why.

Why did Sherlock die?  Because he killed himself.  Because he commit suicide off a tall building.  Sherlock lied to John and John still can’t understand why.

If he just sat down for a few minutes.  He’ll fall asleep on his feet otherwise.  But he’ll fall asleep sitting down.

He flinches as a slot in the base of the door opens and a gloved hand reaches in to take his empty plate.  The slot closes with a grind of rusty metal.  He still feels sick from eating – over cooked, over seasoned pasta, slimy in cheap tomato sauce, scooped up with his hands since he’s never given cutlery – but he hasn’t yet dared to find out what would happen if he were to leave any left or get caught flushing it down the loo.  Starvation or forced feeding or a beating he thinks are likely, and none sound appealing.

Sometimes he wants to push them, disobey, just to show that he still can – except that he can’t.  Not any more.  Given a plate of food, he breaks and eats.  Every time.  Even above the voice that says it’s the only sensible thing to do, he hates himself for it.  He hates himself as he cries and cringes away from them, as he breaks down in front of them.  And he used to call himself a soldier.

John inches his way around the edge of the room, dragging his hand over the wall.  Don’t think.  Walk it off.  Walk off the sleep.  Not so much the pain; his stomach is aching, that can’t be walked off.  It feels hot, like it’s radiating heat.  So does his thigh (increased blood flow to damaged tissues).  He turns the corner by the door to face the bed and Christ.  Don’t even look at it.  The urge to fall onto it, sleep and never wake up, is so strong.  The sheets look warm and comforting.  They are; he remembers how much they are.  Even the mattress, thin enough he can feel the bedframe through it, is a luxury.

It’s so cold.

John shuffles past the bed.  The middle of the floor is wide and open, he needs the wall to lean against.  He loses count of the times he circles the room after either three or four.  Would Lestrade be looking for him?

Sherlock should have found him by now.  Why is he taking so long?

He remembers that Sherlock is dead three seconds later.  His face crumples and his feet manage to drag before picking up.  The knowledge is not new but it still hurts.  Sherlock is dead; Sherlock lied to him.  Their last two conversations had been an argument stemming from dishonesty and straight out lies over a phone.  The way it still hurts so badly must be the sleep deprivation.

There must be some reason.  Sherlock wouldn’t have done it without a good reason.  He has to believe that if nothing else.

The light switches off.


	3. Chapter 3

The room is pitched into utter, inky black. 

John startles, or at least it feels like he did; now in the dark all he can think of is the slow walk to the bed, groping blindly.  Sleep.  He can sleep.  As he clambers under the sheets, tugging them around himself with clumsy hands, he hears himself make some sort of noise – a whine or groan.  His body hurts.  He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed.

He lets his arms flop down on the sheets, elbows straight and hands palm up.  His last thought before he falls asleep is the desperate hope that they’ll stay that way.

It feels like he’s only closed his eyes before he’s awake.  The light is on and it’s so bright it’s shooting pain down his eyes into his skull.  He realises that his hands were up around his head just as the man approaching pulls him out from the sheets and onto his feet.

The cudgel comes down on his shoulder, the bad one.  He can’t see in the brightness.  His knees buckle and there’s another burst of pain with another blow, dancing though the scar tissue and down his arm, making him groan and struggle, undignified.

“Please,” he manages thickly before the cudgel finds his shoulder again, dry sounding against the material of his grey prison boiler suit.  “I can’t sleep like this.”  He’s desperate, he knows there’s nothing he can say to stop them.  He begs anyway because the blows that move to his upper arms, his elbows and then across his swollen back hurt and he cannot think straight.

He realises he should probably be ashamed of how he’s cringing, but when his wrists are tightly held in the man’s grip – the only thing keeping him on his feet – and his body is jerking with the force of each blow, he isn’t.  He hurts, so badly.

He’s left on the floor, lying crumpled where dropped.  He puts one hand to his shoulder where the scar is.  It feels pulverised.  His back feels like another hit might snap it. 

The light switches off.

John crawls to the bed, slow on his hands and knees.  He knows he is only allowed to sleep when in a specific position: legs and arms straight with hands palm up, on his back, on the bed.  They check every twenty or so minutes.  He cannot sleep like that.   Not in the beginning and not now when his flesh is bruised to distension.

He gets into bed anyway to lie down gingerly, because he needs to sleep.  The pain in his back is almost enough to make him cry in frustration; it swells up in his lungs and throat, hot behind his eyes.  He is still so tired.  He closes his eyes and sleeps.

The light switches on; he is hauled up and beaten.  “Just stop,” he shouts, ragged.  His voice breaks as the cudgel lands over his shoulder blades again and again.  “Please just stop.”

Eventually, after they finally leave and the light is turned off, John scrapes his fingernails on the wooden floor.  Why hasn’t Sherlock found him yet?  It never takes Sherlock this long to solve a case.  Isn’t he bothering to look?  He hiccups a gasp that turns into a yawn, absurd and burning in his ribcage.  He yawns again and then again, wide mouthed and unable to stop despite the sharp pain.  His eyes are closed, he realises; not that it makes any difference with the room pitch black.  He is so tired.  He hurts.  He crawls back to the bed and under the covers; the sharp ache in his body draws out a moan.  Why can’t he just sleep?  Why hasn’t Sherlock found him yet?

It’s strangled, the sound he makes.  He’s only going to get woken and beaten soon but he can’t make his body stay still and he can’t not fall asleep.  Another crawling noise from the back of his throat and he realises distantly that it’s a sob.  It hurts as his shoulders ruck up and his ribcage heaves.  It’s still such a long time until morning.  He can’t keep doing this.

He falls asleep.  He’s dragged awake.  As the cudgel hits his back one arm slips free of the man’s grasp; without thinking he flattens his hand and drives the base of his palm up and into the man’s nose.  He feels it break.

The man falls back, cursing and clutching at his face; John stands there, stupid for a long second.  He has to get out.  He can escape.  He wants to shout but his throat has frozen up.  As the man lurches forward, still holding his face now dripping with blood, John makes a half fist and punches at his neck.  It doesn’t fall right – the man’s windpipe is not crushed and John has a half second of terror before the cudgel connects with the top of his shoulder, close to his neck, and he’s crushed down onto his hands and knees.  The man pulls him up by the front of his collar to stand him on his feet.  John sways and as he puts his hands up in front of his face he sees two other men enter the room and close the door behind them.

It’s crowded.  His head is ringing.  The second blow comes to the front of his bad shoulder and is enough to send him spinning.  He crashes against the wall to slip down it, boneless.  Raising his hands to block the third blow, the sharp pain in one finger is enough to tell him it’s broken.  The sight of it bent at a sideways angle is only distant and extraneous information.

John lashes out with his feet and kicks the legs out from underneath the man closest to him.  He can’t hear anything but a rush in both ears; making a grab for the fallen man’s cudgel he is only crushed face down as blows land one after the other across his back and legs.  He can barely feel them.  It’s just one solid hurt now, pain melting into his body to soak there like oil.

They drag him upright and prop him on the bed, unresisting.  His boiler suit is unzipped and for a wild moment John thinks they’re going to rape him.  He’s bundled out of the suit and his underwear, unceremonious; it isn’t until he sees the table waiting outside in the hallway, restraints left open to swallow him, that he starts to struggle.

By the time he’s strapped down and entering the room with the machines his head is a mire of terror; the thought to keep calm, that half the fear is only sleep deprivation, is washed away.  He sees the wire approaching.  It’s attached.  When he opens his mouth he starts to scream and cannot stop.


	4. Chapter 4

The lights are off and remain off.  John finds himself in bed and only moves to bury himself in the sheet.  The room is cold but he is uncomfortably hot, skin prickling and sweating; he has no trouble in sleeping, long and deep bouts of unconsciousness.  He doesn’t know how much time has passed since anyone came in to beat and torture him – every now and then he gets up and fumbles in the dark to eat, drink and use the toilet before sinking back to bed, never having woken properly at all.  He makes sure he has no broken ribs and maps out where the worst of the bruising is as best he can – he is too sore to even reach his own back, pain deeper than the bruises themselves.  He is still drowsing, sitting on the bed, as his fingers search over inflamed flesh – full awareness seems distant.  He cannot stretch enough to touch beyond his thighs.  His knees and elbows feel solid, like they’re about to crack when he bends them.  Still, there is nothing life threatening nor is there any permanent damage, he thinks, he hopes.  The hurt is only superficial.  He tries not to think about it but he knows he hasn’t had an erection since before – which must just be the environment.  He doubts he could physically get off here even if he wanted to.  He almost wants to, just to know that he hasn’t been damaged, that the electricity and the wire hadn’t taken even that from him.  He is too frightened of finding out that he never does.

His broken finger is bound professionally, the only thing they treated.  Muzzy, he cannot remember anyone touching it.  He takes a long drink, fragmented into sips as he cups water from the tap in his hands and brings it, painful, to his mouth.  Then he crawls back into bed and sleeps.

When John wakes into full alertness for the first time it is still pitch black.  He thinks, grimly and as he gingerly gets to his feet, that it’s probably a good thing.  He doesn’t want to see the colourful and swollen expanse of bruising he can still feel across his whole body.  That and the darkness is somehow comforting: he knows he is alone when the lights are off, or at least as alone as he can get with constant surveillance.  The men only come when the lights are on.  This is not good, he recognises detachedly – if it carries on as it is they will breed a fear of the light in him.  It is too quiet and dark for him to care.

John sits on the bed.  It’s uncomfortable and he lies down, which is only slightly less painful.  He cannot remember much of the previous days – days?  Weeks? – and is torn in how grateful he should be for that.  He remembers odd snippets.  He remembers bursting into tears before the man even came close enough to touch him, once.  That makes him grimace into the dark, embarrassment and shame returning in swathes along with coherency.  He thinks he hears noises and every flinch hurts.

Time continues to pass and he can’t tell how long it’s been.  It can’t have been less than a week.  He goes back to bed and tries to do nothing but sleep, pass the time (remain sane), but every muscle still aches and works to keep him awake.  It feels like they’d beaten right through him, reached into every bone and wretched every internal muscle.  It feels like someone had taken a meat tenderiser and applied it to his body opened up through surgery.

More time passes and John sleeps.  When he wakes he dozes.  There is nothing else to do.  He wonders when they will next come to torture him; he flickers between apathy and anxiety so strong that he feels like he could claw his way through the floorboards if only he was given the chance.  He knows he is not given the chance - the camera is infra red and that they will definitely come if he starts.  It is infuriating.  Sometimes he wants to tear at something, anything.  He wants to break something apart, smash it into pieces that cannot be reassembled.  Sometimes he wants someone to come in and beat him just so he can fight back.  Then he remembers what happens when he fights and takes back ever wanting to see anyone again.

When he cannot stand the dark and the silence, the sheer inactivity, he gets up to pace.  It's not enough.  He cannot do more than walk without every part of his body protesting violently, and even then it’s a limping shuffle.  He claws at the walls and bangs on the door just for a few seconds but it doesn't make him feel better.  He stops quickly, breathing too hard and fear writhing in his gut, waiting for them to come and take him away.  They don't.  Shaken, he sits down on the floor, back to the wall, and digs his nails into his forearms.  His nails are long now; some are broken and peeled back into the flesh of his fingers.  He needs a shave.  His hair is long enough that he can hold it in his fists to pull.

He wakes slumped on the floor to the smell of food.  It is old slices of pizza, lukewarm and dry, not even on a plate but tipped onto the floorboards from the slot in the door.  John picks them up and eats them, hungry; he can't remember how long it has been since they last fed him, not that that means much at all.  The salt coats his mouth, the overly sweet tomato paste gummy in the back of his throat.  He goes to the sink, slowly with hands outstretched even though he hasn’t bumped into anything for a long time, and turns on the tap.  Nothing comes out.

The tap always produces fresh water, if unpleasant tasting and icy cold.  He turns and turns the knob, wondering stupidly why there is none this time.  Fear builds.  The knob jams and he turns it the other way until it jams again.  John swallows and gropes at the sink as if the working tap is still there, he is just missing it.  No, there is nothing else there.  The sink is as it always has been.  A sick feeling wells up and he cannot contain it.  He reaches to the tap and turns it fully in one direction and then the other.  Still dry.  He had not realised how thirsty he is until then.

He tries to stay quiet but he cannot help the whine that escapes his closed lips.  He continues to turn the tap, fumbling and desperate.  Perhaps he is only doing something wrong.  Perhaps he forgot how the sink works and he only needs to remember; if he tries enough times eventually he must do it right, if only by accident.  He knows he is wrong, that he’s falling apart.  The water must have been switched off.  He keeps turning the tap as no water emerges anyway; it still feels like a betrayal.  He starts to cry.


	5. Chapter 5

He sits on the bed, back against the wall and sheet pulled up around his body.  He is thirsty; it is so cold.  John clenches the sheet in his fists – it feels dirty, caked in sweat and worse.  It hasn't been cleaned once.  Perhaps he should have washed it when he still had the water.  He should have washed himself better:  he’s dirty - more than the sheet and mattress are.  His skin prickles, his scalp aches with it.  He hasn't brushed his teeth for so long.  He feels sick and disgusting; he shouldn't be on the bed, dirtying it further.  He ought to be on the floor.

His mouth is dry as he swallows.  Still so thirsty.  How long has it been since he'd tried to use the tap?  He doesn’t know.  It feels like a long time, though everything feels like a long time now.  Perhaps the lack of water had been an unintentional fault and they've fixed it by now, or perhaps they are only giving him water at certain times.  They can't just let him die.  They want to keep him alive, surely.

Maybe the tap is working now.  He doesn't want to try only to be cheated again, but what if it is working and he's just sitting here, being thirsty when he could be drinking?  How long has it been since he last drank?  Can't remember.  John gets up slowly, still clinging to the sheet, and edges his way along the wall to the sink.  There's something like trepidation as he finds the cool acrylic.  His hand on the tap is shaking as he turns it, slowly when the bones in his fingers feel brittle.  Phalanges.  Nothing comes out and he keeps turning.  Just a little more, it must be just a little more.  The knob jams.  No water.  He feels stupid over the crawling disappointment.

Maybe he just didn't do it properly; what if it is one of those taps that are meant to push down rather than be turned?  He pushes it down, pulls it up.  It doesn't move.  What if it’s only stuck?  Is he just too weak?  The thought’s frustrating, gnawing at him.  He tugs at it but it won't budge.  His hands slip.  They're sweaty, they shake.  "Don't sweat," he croaks.  He stop himself.  "Please."  If he sweats he's just going to lose water faster.  What if they're not going to turn the water on?  What if they're just going to let him die?

He is still sweating.  Why won't his body work?

He goes back to bed, stumbling once as he stands on the corner of the sheet.  Surely someone will find him before he dies.  Sherlock.  Lestrade.  They haven't found him yet but they will before he dies.  That's what happens.  He huddles on the bed, cold feet pushing under his thighs.  They're always close but they're never too late.  Then he remembers Sherlock.

It's like a kick to the chest.  His ribcage feels like it's buckled in and crushing his lungs.  Sherlock jumped because they'd been too late.  Sherlock is dead.  How had he forgotten that?

He is going crazy.  Maybe he already is.  How?  He should be stronger than this.  John shuts his eyes and pushes his face into the wall.  He feels sick, his head hurts.  He is still shaking and sweating.  The thought that he has been drugged comes to him suddenly.  The food.  They must have drugged it.  The _bastards_ ; the burst of anger swells up in him and leaves just as quickly.  They’re going to drug him and he can’t do anything to stop them.  He’s like a lab rat in a cage.  There’s nothing he can do other than just not eating anything.  

Not eating anything.  Suddenly the idea is tempting.  He’ll do that.  He’ll starve to death.  The thought is both dizzying in revelation and a wonderful relief.

Time passes and John lies down.  Time is always passing and he can’t measure it, can’t control it, can’t do anything but stay in bed and feel hunger, thirst and hurt.  Some sort of mild curry is pushed into the room; he can smell it but he’s not going to touch it.  He can’t stand this any longer.  He’ll die.  He’s fine with dying.  Sherlock is dead and no one’s going to save him, certainly not himself.  John drifts to sleep.

He wakes when the light switches on.  He pulls himself back into the wall in animal fear – it’s too bright to open his eyes, even the swathe of red from behind his eyelids is painful, but his breath tumbles into hyperventilation when he hears the door screech open.  He can’t see anyone approach but they are, of course they are.  He doesn’t want to hurt any more.  He can’t.  He lashes out as hands grip his arms, kicking ineffectively until his legs are immobilised and he can’t do anything more than wriggle.

He retches in fear but has nothing to throw up.  Something smashes into his chest, into his hips.  He folds into a chair in the corridor, large and cold and hard.  His arms, legs, chest and waist are strapped down, painfully restrictive.  He dry retches again.  His head is pinned against the back of the chair, a strap pulled and tightened over his forehead.  What are they going to do to him?  Horror kicks in his chest and pulls gasps from his mouth.

Someone manhandles his face; he opens his eyes to see hands and a length of thin rubber tubing.  He clamps his mouth and eyes shut reflexively, breath panting out through his nose, loud and choppy.  Nasogastric feeding, gavage.  Force feeding.  It should be fine, it’s what they do in hospitals, the tube’s a little too big but it’s a perfectly safe and –

the tubing burns as its pushed up one nostril.  He jerks the millimetres the straps allow him to; blood starts dribbling into his open mouth, down his chin.  He can’t breathe, suffocating, he’s going to choke, they’re choking him and it’s burning like vomiting in a raw throat only worse, infinitely so.  The hands pause from pushing the tubing in but still smother his face.  He can’t breathe, can’t make a sound.  His lungs start to ache, chest heaving.  His mouth flaps open uselessly.  His previous resolve to die crumbles: let me breathe, please just let me breathe, please.  He opens his eyes but it’s still just a painful white blur.

The hands finally start again, carry on in their burning.  Suddenly he can breathe and he gasps in chunks of air, too small from the binding restricting his chest.  It’s not enough, he needs more.  The taste of blood is thick and revolting in his mouth, sucked in with each breath.  He can feel himself tremble, his stomach and oesophagus attempting to eject the tubing even as he’s panting for air.  It doesn’t budge.  It’s disgusting, alien and intrusive.

His eyes are still closed but he can feel the cold liquid enter his stomach.  If he vomits now he’ll choke on it; the thought is terrifying.  They keep pouring the feed in and he can feel his stomach distend with it.  It’s too much.  They’re giving him too much.  His entire abdomen seems to clench.

It finally stops.  The hands disappear and the only sound that remains is his own sticky breath.  His eyes creep open, not able to stand anticipation.  He’s alone.  The tubing is slick and smeared with red.  Blood still trickles into his mouth, tickling his lips, and he spits it out as best as he can – a weak dribble doing little more than coat his chin.  They’ll leave the tube in to stop him throwing it all up again but for how long?  His arms and legs have already gone numb but he’s sure he’s shaking.  He breathes heavily through chattering teeth.  He wants them to come back.  He hates the tube, hates the way it burns and scratches and he can’t do a single thing to move it.  Don’t throw up.  He doesn’t want to suffocate.  His jaws make chewing actions as if trying to reject the tubing – it’s futile but he can’t stop.  It’s too bright, he just wants this to be over.  He just wants to be back in his room, in the dark

They do come back, if after what feels like hours.  He’d gone through painful pins and needles and now his limbs feel numb and spongy.  The tubing is pulled out inch by slow inch, breaking the scabs and causing fresh blood to start to trickle down his face and crawl along the tube to the man’s gloved hands.  It feels disgusting, scraping along a part of his insides that shouldn’t be touched.  He doesn’t feel the pinch of needle into his arm.  He doesn’t realise anything is wrong until bare seconds before he blacks out.


	6. Chapter 6

He wakes in his room, in the dark, again and again.  Black smears his memory, discolouring and painting over the other things he is sure must be there but can no longer make out.  The dark includes the moments he wakes and the time after in which he lives.  The periods of blaring light he is never quite sure about.  They seem like nightmares, indistinct and terrifying, but he knows they must have happened from the bruises and bloody noses his fingers find later.

There’s pain, sometimes, sparkling down his bones or aching in the outline of his muscles.  Other times there’s a voice and words that he repeats endlessly, something to cling on to: _my name is John Watson_ , and also: _I believe in Sherlock Holmes_.

The second one makes him ache in places that the other pains never quite reach.  He doesn’t know who Sherlock Holmes is but occasionally, when echoing the words to himself, he realises that he’s crying from it and he doesn’t know why.  It must be true – it feels true – though he can’t think of how he can believe in a person he doesn’t know.

There is something wrong but he doesn’t remember what.  John Watson sits in the dark and doesn’t know what he is frightened of or what he did to achieve the latest set of bruises.  He cries and screams, howls angry obscenities and realises as he does so that he doesn’t know why he started.  He is tied down to be electrocuted and between the pain and suffocation does not know what the punishment is for.

 _My name is John Watson.  I believe in Sherlock Holmes_.

Life shouldn’t be a pitch black room, cold and with never enough water, interspersed with patches of pain and light.  He shouldn’t be fed through the tube pushed through his nose.  He knows that, like he knows that his name is John Watson and that he does believe in Sherlock Holmes.  Something to cling to.  He just doesn’t know what there is other than black and light and pain, or who Sherlock Holmes is or what he did to be believed in.

He wakes in pitch black and thinks that he’s put on weight, that his body is different.  That it is wrong as he cannot have put on weight, that there is nothing he has done that would lead to it.  He panics because it is only something else that they are doing to him that he doesn’t know or understand.  His body isn’t his own anymore, just something that they let him keep a hold of because it’s convenient.  The vomit stinks in the toilet and the seat is wet with it.  The light switches on and he has a glimpse of dried blood in long, clawed smudges on the tank before he is bundled out.

He is electrocuted.  Time passes.  He is injected and falls asleep; a respirator mask is held over his face.  Time passes.  He wakes with tired limbs and atrophied muscle.  His hair is shorter, his beard is gone.  Time passes.  When he almost forgets everything but the dark, light and pain a voice comes back to remind him: _my name is John Watson,_ and: _I believe in Sherlock Holmes_.

John Watson wakes up and it’s dark.  He’s on the bed, lying on one arm – it’s numb and his fingers feel swollen with fluid.  When he rolls over the pins and needles are enough to make him freeze with his breath held, reduced to a coward waiting for it to pass.  He should be more used to pain, he thinks, except that he’s not.  He has only become more frightened.

He remembers fragments of the times when he’d been brave, back before.  When he’d fought against the men.  There had been – still was, not that he thought about it now – nothing in his room to use as a weapon.  His fists had never been enough.  He’d spent time thinking of how to escape.  He never had.  Fractions of plans, half-remembered, come to him.  They don’t make much sense.

John Watson doesn’t want to escape.  Why would he, when whatever else there is in the world might well be even worse than this is?

He gets up to have a drink from the tap, then uses the toilet.  He sits on the floor and tried not to think.  Thinking makes the time go slowly and the tap less willing to give up its water.  He shouldn’t think, only when he isn’t thinking he wants.  John Watson wants so many things, so deep and hard it hurts.  Not like the electrocution or beatings hurt, but like how not knowing Sherlock Holmes hurts.

He wants to speak to someone who’ll listen.  He wants someone to touch him who won’t cause him pain.  He wants to see someone’s face when they’re happy.

He wants too much; it wraps around his chest and aches.  Sometimes John Watson cries with it.

He doesn’t this time.  His eyes are open, he is sure, but the black is undulating and blotched with grey.  Occasionally he sees objects, shapes – people, even – but when his hands and fingers explore they find nothing but the floor and walls.  Just dreams.  Sometimes he is relieved for that, other times disappointed.  Now there are just the slow moving patterns and he is content enough to sit and watch them.

The light switches on and he is blinded; he buckles down on the floor, face covered.  His heart is suddenly hammering, he feels like being sick.  They’re coming in to hurt him.

They drag him up and out of his boiler suit but instead of the table he is pushed roughly into different clothes - new underwear, trousers, his arms manhandled roughly into sleeves, layers and layers.  He's limp because he knows if he tries to move, even if only to dress himself, the cudgels are never more than a second away.  This cloth is cold but it's soft, not like the plastic feeling of his own.  He's pulled into the hallway and onto the force feeding chair, not the table.  It shakes a breath of relief out of him that's quickly reversed as he's wheeled into a different room and his hands are only loosely tied behind his back, with more loose restraints just below his knees.  He can't get out but can wriggle, move large inches.  His eyes are pinned shut against the light but it's dimmer than usual, not so piercing. 

The break in pattern scares him; he puts his face down to hide in one shoulder.  A hand on the top of his head yanks it back up to face forward.

He's left alone in the silence.  What are they going to do this time?  The anticipation is terrible, crawling under his skin.  John Watson struggles then freezes as a low buzzing starts.

Then, a voice, stricken: “Oh – Christ.  Jesus Christ.”  It’s not anything he recognises and the panic starts to bubble over.  He doesn’t know this.  It terrifies him.

“John, can you hear me?”  The voice continues and he starts to pull at his bindings.  He looks desperately from side to side but there are just grey, flat walls.  He doesn’t want this.  He doesn’t want to know what this is leading to.  “John, calm down, please.  It’s Lestrade, Greg Lestrade, you’re hurting yourself.”

He doesn’t know who Greg Lestrade is.  He doesn’t like the panic in the voice.  What’s going to happen?  What will they do to him this time?  He strains against his bindings but neither they nor the chair can be moved and it only hurts.  He pushes his face against the chair’s tall backrest, trying to hide, and blood starts to trail from his nose into his mouth.

“Please John, please.”  The voice sounds like it’s begging.  That’s wrong: no one begs him.  Is it a trick?  Why would anyone trick him when they could take whatever they wanted by force?  “Please, stop it.”

Time passed and eventually he stills.  He is exhausted; his body screams with it.  “John?”  The voice again.  It sounds like it’s cracking and he pushes his head back against the hard chair, closing his eyes and shaking.  “Can you speak?”

This he can answer, and fears what would happen if he didn’t.  His tongue is unwilling and he mouths the words with ungainly lips before speaking.  “My name is John Watson,” he says.  “I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

There’s a pause.  In the quiet he can almost relax, except that the voice comes back.  “Sherlock – why do you say that?”  It’s not just quieter but smaller.

He doesn’t know how to answer.  The words are only thing he knows, the only thing he can say.  He says it again.

“I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

Once started he can’t seem to stop.  He’s starting to panic again, wondering and fearing if this is a test that he’s failing, a failure he’s going to be punished for.

“I believe in Sherlock Holmes, I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”

He carries on even after the voice stops trying to speak over him, the buzzing quietens and the red light fades, when the room falls to silent and he’s sure he’s alone again.  He stops when he’s hit across the face by one of the men taking him back to his room.  In the dark he crawls into his bed and shakes.

On the other side of the world, in a tiny room in Kobe, Japan, Sherlock sits with his laptop.  He closes the browser window to the now finished stream.  He is shaking as gets up; he doesn’t pack, only takes the first taxi to the airport.  He’s been hiding for too long.


	7. Chapter 7

He’s lying in bed when he wakes, and doesn’t recognise the room.  It’s not his room.  There is someone close beside him and John cries out from the fear of it, eyes closing in the piercing light.  Then the man is standing, he’s saying something but John only turns and buries his face in the mattress, bracing himself for what must come next.  The anticipation is cruel as it doesn’t.

They stay like that for a while before the man leaves and John is left alone.  What are they doing?  John rolls onto his back, covering his eyes against the light with his hands.  What are they doing?

People come and go but they never touch him.  He is given good food and the tap never stops working.  He can turn his own lights on and off.  He doesn’t know where he is or who the people are.

“I came back when I saw it,” someone says as they sit near but not too close.  Their sentences are disjointed.  “I didn’t mean for.  I didn’t think they’d do anything – what they did to you.  But I got you out, John.  They’re gone, the people who.”

The man’s voice is both appalling and enthralling at once and John Watson watches out of the corner of his eye as the man puts his head in his hands.  He pulls his own curly hair, then looks up and catches John’s glance.

“Do you remember where you are?” he says.  John shakes his head slowly, in tiny movements.  The man looks down before speaking again.  “Who I am?”

John shakes his head again.  “Nothing?”  John doesn’t think he’s seen this man before now.  He shakes his head.

“I’m Sherlock.”  The man is looking at John’s chest, not meeting his eyes any more.  His voice is rough but not in a bad way, an angry way.  “We used to live together, in 221b Baker Street.  In London.  We solved crime.”  Then Sherlock’s voice breaks and he pushes a hand against his mouth, knuckles white against his lips.

John lies there, motionless, and eventually Sherlock leaves.  The room feels a lot less crowded and John relaxes, staring up at the ceiling.

Some time later there’s a man sitting almost too close, hunched over in his chair.  “We used to go to Angelo’s to eat, between cases,” he says.  “You would have pasta with some variation of tomato sauce, usually the spaghetti bolognaise.  I would steal some of your meal even when I had my own but you were never angry about it.” 

John listens, head turned to face the man.  For a while there is quiet, save for the constant buzz outside the room and the breathing inside.  “Do you remember me?”  the man says.  John doesn’t, so he shakes his head.  They fall back into the quiet.  The man’s mouth is twisted down as he starts to speak again, thick and uneven.  “John, please say something.  Please.” 

It sounds like he’s begging but he couldn’t be.  It scares John, how close this man is, though he doesn’t know why it should.  The man’s head is bowed and his black hair near enough to touch.  It looks soft; he wishes it were further away.  John opens his mouth tiredly, forcing his tongue to move for the words that sound like begging but couldn’t be.  “My name is John Watson,” he says, a sticky murmur. “I believe in Sherlock Holmes.”  They’re only things he remembers; he looks to the man’s face, watching as it crumbles, and hopes his words are enough at the same time as knowing they’re not.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Walled Garden](https://archiveofourown.org/works/711953) by [CactusWren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CactusWren/pseuds/CactusWren)




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